Major Flooding and Storms

The weather has been very crazy and unpredictable around here lately.  The days and nights are starting to blur together so I don’t remember all the details. All I know is that the Sanctuary is safe and fairly dry (or at least we aren’t dealing with feet of water, just random water puddles).

Friday night into Saturday  morning we had storms rip through the area, dumping I don’t know how many inches of rain. We have yet to put our rain gauges out (even though we have two!) I’m not sure if we are simply that dry and the ground soaked it in or we missed the deluge that drowned out everyone else. I’m guessing on the latter.  The amount of water was so great that on Saturday, some horse owners had to evacuate their horses and are now displaced.

We had a family reunion to attend to but only stayed for a short while so that we could make it back before the skies opened and poured on us. I think we missed the massive downpours (they went east of the Sanctuary). But we did get a bit more rain.

We were supposed to have the farrier come out Saturday morning but with the amount of rain, we decided to postpone King’s shoeing, much to my dismay.

As far as I can remember, we didn’t get any more rain Saturday evening. Another storm blew through about 4am Sunday. The storm actually woke me up. There was so much lightening and thunder before the rain hit. I don’t think we got as much although there was plenty. After about an hour, I ended up crashing and sleeping for a little while longer. We missed out on the hail for the Sunday rain.

I decided that I would start working on getting the big pasture divided because there’s no way that we’ll get to spraying the pasture with the farm truck. I was able to drag along just enough poly posts to string wire (although I’ll need to take more out later). We were going to fence off the bottom and give that time to grow so that when we go into the no rain season, that the horses will have lush grass. I didn’t get to fencing that part off. I simply put in enough fences to divide the pasture in two. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get across the little creek that runs through the bottom of the pasture. With all the rain I was positive that I wouldn’t. Nope. There were only a few puddles in the creek. In years past, I would have to find the narrowest part of the creek to jump over it. I walked through one of the wider sections and dodged just a few puddles. So either the pasture is that dry, we didn’t get that much rain, or the drain tiles that the farmers have been putting in are changing the landscape and affecting our pasture. I’m fine with no swampy pasture bottom. I wasn’t able to finish getting the pasture divided though. After I got the posts in, I had to quit. The sun had already set and the mosquitoes were starting to carry me away (and not in the direction of the house). So I opted to hold off until later. I had hoped to finish up my project Monday night but Monday was whole different story.

Monday we had severe weather. The skies were once again green (they were green when I was putting in fence posts). Green skies are always bad. I have yet to see a green sky where something bad doesn’t happen.  I headed to work Monday morning as normal after doing chores and getting ready. Late in the morning the storms hit. I watched the radar as the storms approached the Sanctuary. I was worried even though the big herd has two lean tos and the ponies and mares have enough protection from outbuildings. But I still watched and worried.

We had so much rain and even had golf ball sized hail at work. I don’t know what we had for hail at home. No one reported hail in Humboldt so hopefully we didn’t get any. I work about an hour away from the Sanctuary (45 minutes). About the time I was planning on leaving, they told us we couldn’t leave. Every road was under water. So I had to stick it out at work and watch the radar hoping that we wouldn’t get any more rain and that the water from north wouldn’t continue to flood out the roads. We were able to sneak out about a half an hour later but you could already see the damage the extensive water had caused. I tried making it home following my normal route was rerouted because of water over the road. Thank goodness for multiple routes to the Sanctuary.

I wasn’t able to get out to check on the horses right away but everything at the Sanctuary looked like nothing had happened except a normal SD thunderstorm. I wasn’t able to get out until 8:30pm. By then the entire herd was up for the night. I didn’t get a chance to check the pasture to see if we were flooded but the pen was a muddy mess, trying to suck my boot off. While I was doing chores (and even before that), I heard thunder and saw lightening. It was all around us and I was positive we were in for yet another storm. I’m not sure if we really got much. I crashed at 10:30 and didn’t hear anything until my alarm went off and woke to sunny skies. When I’d gone out to do chores, the skies were dark. It felt like I was going out to do chores after the sun sets. Even the yard light had already kicked on because it was that dark out. The skies lit up with all the lightening. I’m guessing that those to the east of the Sanctuary got hit again with yet more rain.

I know when I was watching the radar all day on Monday, that the map was pretty much red everywhere. At one point, I even saw purple. Luckily, it was nowhere near the Sanctuary. But we are definitely in to summer storm weather. And we missed the tornadoes. Or hearts go out to those that have been affected by the storms over the past couple of days.

We are supposed to get more rain the next three days or so. Lets hope that it’s not all that severe and that the water recedes quickly. I was talking with someone who bales their own horse hay. At this point, if anyone has hay down, it’ll be crap. This could become a very interesting hay season. I’m worried. I don’t want to buy any first cutting hay because of all the rain. Anything that is down will most likely be considered a loss. But hopefully the weather will start cooperating so that what hay hasn’t been cut can dry out, be cut, and baled before any more storms come rolling through. There’s always something to worry about, no matter what season we are in.